Digest: Breaking Down and Assimilating Eating Disorder Recovery, Popular Culture, Whatever

Homeless People Pee on the Street, But You Probably Get Persnickety With Them Too

2009-07-12T13:11:00.008-05:00

A short while ago, I was chastised by a neighbor for letting my dog pee on the grassy median between the sidewalk and the street.

Fine: I live in a neighborhood that demands that dog-walkers scoop up the poop that gets inevitably dropped. This makes sense. People around here have lovely, precisely manicured landscaping. Who wants those horticultural artworks fouled? Moreover, even on the plain grassy spaces, feces would pile up quickly if every dog's waste was left behind. It's a city. Too many dogs live in too little space for anyone to fairly treat themselves as an exception to the rule. Biodegradable though it may be, dog feces accumulates in an urban environment more quickly than it disappears.

But urine? I understand why someone would take issue with a dog emptying his bladder on a person's prize-winning petunia. The chemical effects of dog piss could surely damage such delicate plant. Pee in the exact same spot of grass could probably wreak some havoc too. I'm not arguing that urine of any sort is an especially salubrious contribution to ground water. And it's not as though I am letting my greyhound take a leak on some kid's lollipop.

But my dog has to pee somewhere. Moreover, how could I clean it up? Are doggie diapers the only choice for the responsible city-dwelling dog owner?

Freya Stark

2009-07-12T10:09:00.005-05:00

Has anyone ever heard of Freya Stark? Am I the only one whose attention this remarkable woman has escaped up until now? A trail-blazing explorer of the Middle East, an incisive travel writer, she deserves to be far better-known than I think she is. At the least, she deserves a quick Googling.

A few select quotes:

"One can only really travel if one lets oneself go and takes what every place brings without trying to turn it into a healthy private pattern of one's own and I suppose that is the difference between travel and tourism."

"The tourist travels like a snail in his own shell, and stands on his own perambulating doorstep to look at the continents. But if you sally forth with a leisurely and blank mind there is no knowing what may happen to you."

“Absence is one of the most useful ingredients of family life, and to dose it rightly is an art like any other.”

"The great and almost only comfort about being a woman is that one can always pretend to be more stupid than one is and no one is surprised."

At 93, as she was planning a trip to Spain, Dame Freya was asked about death. She replied, "I feel about it as about the first ball, or the first meet of hounds, anxious as to whether one will get it right, and timid and inexperienced -- all the feelings of youth."

Now You See Me; Now You Don't

2009-07-07T23:57:00.004-05:00

This summer, I've experienced something curious. (Okay. Plenty curious things--but one I'll talk about now.) As I described during last school year, the first-year class at my law school, like those at many, was divided into four sections. Each section shared the same 1L schedule all year, every day, all day. Our days were very regimented, unlike the average undergrad or graduate schedule. We had assigned seats in each class, so we even sat in the same damned seats all day long, every day. Though each section was large enough to fill an auditorium, each section did develop a certain cohesion, a certain group identity. Even with a crowd that big, one is bound to feel connected to the unit of people that one sees for the majority of one's waking hours for ten months. Plus, no one else in the whole world knows as well as these people do what exactly one is experiencing in the alternate reality that is one's 1L year. The experience is not unlike high school or summer camp or the military: you may not like these people, you may not interact with these people outside of this context, but you've been thrust into a certain forced intimacy because inhabit the same microcosm, that microcosm is an intense one, and that shared, intense experience draws you together, whether you like it or not. At least so long as it lasts.

I certainly made friends. Several classmates I began hanging out with outside of school. Many more I cultivated warm, ongoing in-class relationships with. But most people--just by sheer force of numbers--I didn't talk to much, even if I saw them all the time on the other side of the lecture hall, knew their names, etc.

Still, I've been surprised by the number of e-mails and messages I've received from former section-mates. No shock to hear from some individuals, of course. If my friends suddenly stopped communicating with me, that would be the greater shock. But, wow: the number of people who I didn't even realize paid much attention to me at all, who have made friendly contact this summer. Wow: the number of people in that category who seem to know things about me, remember things I said, think of me when they see something, etc.

This is a lovely, unexpected revelation. But, again, wow. I often assume that no one sees me at all, no one is paying attention to me. Sometimes this thinking comforts me. To reassure myself that no one notices my fuck-ups can be soothing. Frequently, though, I am saddened to think that I am pretty invisible in this world, totally forgettable. Wallpaper with a pulse. You know the thinking: nobody would even notice, much less care, if I were gone, if I never existed at all. Not suicidal ideation, mind you, but rather just a persistent sense that I am not the sort of person who people pay attention to. But, God, maybe people do see me more than I usually think.

As you know, I am a racial minority at my school. So, just being the (very pale, blonde) white woman in the mix does make me stand out, I know. But to have people notice more about me than that, to know me from a distance as something more substantive than that, jars me.

Again, I've got some tender spots when it comes to invisibility. Some of those issues spring from my early childhood; some of them stick with me because of long stretches of my life when I was virtually invisible to many of those around me. I felt like some creepy watcher: I quietly observed, yet people I met many times barely remembered my name or anything more about me than, perhaps, who I was dating or married to at the time.

What to do with evidence that challenges a long-held pattern of cognition?

Kafka: The Servant of a God Not Believed In

2009-07-06T17:22:00.003-05:00

I adored this mini-bio of Franz Kafka from Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac so much, I just had to share it below. I wish my own neuroses resulted something half so meaningful as Kafka's did . . . .

It's the birthday of Franz Kafka, (books by this author) born in Prague (1883). At the time, Prague was part of the Hapsburg Empire of Bohemia. He grew up in a Jewish ghetto in Prague, speaking German, in a family that identified themselves as Czech. He lived almost his entire life with his parents, even after graduating from law school and holding a steady job at the government-run Workman's Accident Institute — a place where he oversaw the implementing of safety measures. His work helped prevent lumber workers from losing their limbs.

His family's apartment in the Jewish ghetto in Prague was tiny, noisy, and subject to the rule and whims of his tyrannical father. Kafka once noted, "I want to write and there's a constant trembling in my forehead. I'm sitting in my room which is the noise headquarters of the whole apartment, doors are slamming everywhere. … Father breaks down the door of my room and marches through with the bottom of his bathrobe dragging behind him. Valli shouts through the foyers as if across a Parisian street, asking if father's hat has been brushed. The front door makes a noise like a sore throat … Finally, father is gone, and all that remains is the more tender, hopeless peeping of the two canaries."

In that noisy claustrophobic apartment with his parents and three sisters, Kafka would hypnotize himself to get in a frame of mind to write. He said, "Writing … is a deeper sleep than death … just as one wouldn't pull a corpse from its grave, I can't be dragged from my desk at night."

Kafka was terrified of his father, who convinced his son early on and again and again that he was a failure in life and would never amount to anything. Kafka stuttered around his father, but no one else.

Kafka spent his life steeped in self-loathing, and he had a number of psychosomatic illnesses. To cure his perceived illnesses, he tried all sorts of herbal and natural healing remedies. He went through a phase where he chewed each bite he put into his mouth a minimum of 10 chews. And he became vegetarian, eating mostly nuts and fruits, and followed a regimen of doing aerobics in front of an open window. He was actually a physically robust and healthy young man, but he was neurotic in a number of ways. He confessed that he had "a boundless sense of guilt," and one of his friends wrote that Kafka was "the servant of a God not believed in."

He was engaged to a woman in Berlin for five years, then broke it off with her. He wrote to her, "After all, you are a girl, and you want a man, not an earthworm." They were engaged a second time, and broke it off again. Their distant relationship was carried on almost entirely by writing letters. He once said: "Letter writing is an intercourse with ghosts, not only with the ghost of the receiver, but with one's own, which emerges between the lines of the letter being written. … Written kisses never reach their destination, but are drunk en route by these ghosts."

Kafka died of tuberculosis in 1924, a month shy of his 41st birthday. All of his sisters later died at concentration camps in the Holocaust. Not much of Kafka's work was published during his lifetime. Kafka had instructed his friend Max Brod to set his manuscripts on fire upon his death, but Brod refused, and instead edited and published Kafka's work.

Kafka's best-known work is The Metamorphosis, which begins, "As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning after disturbing dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into an enormous bug."

His book The Trial begins, "Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one morning."

Kafka has been made into an adjective, "Kafkaesque," a literary allusion dropped into conversation from time to time by people who may or may not be familiar with his work, which is actually full of humor. "Kafkaesque" has come to be used to describe things of a gloomy, bizarre, eerie, nightmarish, or doomed nature, and is often applied to bureaucratic or institutional situations.

Kafka once wrote in a letter to a friend: "The books we need are of the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that make us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide, or lost in a forest remote from all human habitation — a book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us."

If I Has $180 To Spare...

2009-07-05T15:11:00.004-05:00

. . . I would probably own this.

Oh, Mark Ryden, how I love you.

On Celibacy

2009-07-03T22:58:00.004-05:00

. . . While we're on the topic of sex . . . .

I've been sexually active approximately half of my life. Between stints with live-in boyfriends, I was married for six years. During all of those years, I was, I gather, rather hyper-sexual. (This was true, often to my ex-husband's chagrin. That, however, is another story.) So, in the broad spectrum of numbers of sexual encounters, ranging from those had by hermits nestled in the Himalayas, through Carmelite nuns, through socially retarded Comic Con attendees with poor hygiene practices, through chaste Evangelical Christians saving themselves for marriage, to those had by the average reader of Bust magazine, to volunteers for "Girls Gone Wild" videos, to Jenna Jamison . . . well, my own are closer to one end than the other, though not so far as to seem impolite in generally enlightened company. Granted, it's a bit of a cheat to count all the encounters one is bound to experience with a long-term partner, and those definitely up my numbers considerably. Still, I've had my share of sex, and I like it a lot. I don't mind telling you so.

That said, I don't have sex. I don't just mean that I'm in a dry spell. I mean rather that I consider myself celibate, i.e. consciously choosing to abstain from sex.

I haven't dated anyone since starting law school, but that's actually an independent matter. I stopped having sex before I stopped dating. This puzzled and frustrated the men I dated during this post-sex era. Honestly, though, I'm a puzzling and frustrating person to date anyhow, so my refusal to have sex only added to an already extensive list.

Something dawned on me during my casual dating experiences in the years since my last serious romantic relationship ended: I generally only really want to have sex for two main reasons. To wit, (1) to experience the physical pleasure of sexual stimulation and release, and (2) to feel emotionally connected to someone I love in a particular way, by giving & receiving and being vulnerable & nurturing vulnerability. Now, life is murky generally, and human relations are murkier still. So, lots of other reasons--healthy or not--may occasionally factor into the equation. However, more often than not, when I distill my motivations for having sex, the results either fit into (1) or (2), or they are generated by drives within my head that, upon reflection, I would not like to indulge.

So. What result? Well, as to (1): I am an inveterate, deft, and unabashed masturbator. (There's an entry for the ol' CV, huh?) I've been doing it a lot longer than I've been doing a lot of activities, so it really only makes sense that repetition has honed my autoerotic dexterity. I bat 1000 by myself. With partners, the purely physical score card is riddled with home runs and strikes. (Not to mention a few foul balls. That, however, is yet another story.) So, while it's nice and interesting to satisfy (1) with somebody else, doing so is by no means necessary. In some cases, frankly, it's far more convenient and effective not to involve any other Social Security numbers in the whole process.

And (2)? For a multitude of reasons, (2) just cannot obtain presently. It's still a real enough desire, but it won't be fulfilled right now NO MATTER WHAT. There simply is no one in my life at present with whom I want to experience the sort of deep intimacy that I hope to achieve through sex. No amount of having sex with friends, having sex with dates who I know that I honestly don't want a serious relationship with--no matter how well it all goes--will change this fact. It may make me a little sad sometimes to acknowledge the absence of someone about whom I feel that way, but that still doesn't change the fact that (2) just can't be satisfied under my current circumstances.

So, I save myself a lot of vain hope, interpersonal wrangling, additional psychotherapy, and, well, clean-up. I don't have sex. Or at least not with anyone else.

Perhaps I flatter myself by thinking that I could have sex if I wanted to do so. I'm no Catherine Deneuve, no Anna Karina. I'm no one's muse, and I sure-as-shit am not model material. But, hell, I don't think it's arrogant of me to believe that I am attractive enough for normal purposes. Considering that adults having sex is a pretty normal purpose, I think I'm attractive enough for it. I just choose to act otherwise.

Being essentially celibate by choice is abnormal, statistically, if not normatively. I am of an age that permits sexual activity without any assumption of irresponsibility. I am not genuflecting to either religious conviction or an inheritance of guilt about sex (far from it!). And I really, really like sex. Yet, I have made a lifestyle for myself that consists in part of not having sex.

A lot of the sex I've had has not been what I wanted it to be. So many sexual encounters, whether with serious partners or friends with the proverbial benefits or one-night stands, has been about something else. Sometimes I was lonely. Sometimes I was bored. Sometimes I wanted to seem liberated or care-free. Often--so often--I wanted to feel validated. I wanted to feel wanted. I wanted affection from my spouse or partner and, lacking any other means to get it, I had sex. I wanted my partner to communicate with me and, attracted as I am to human black boxes, I didn't know any other way to get them to reveal themselves to me aside from having sex with them. Sometimes it worked; I got whatever it was that I wanted. Frequently, though, such strategies were like going to a gas station for an endoscopy: it's not a terrible goal, and it's not a terrible place, but it's just not the right place for the achievement of that goal. So, if sex is not going to give me these things right now, why have it? It just won't do those jobs, even if I want it to. It just won't do those jobs, no matter how much sex I have. I've tried. It doesn't.

I've taken no vow of chastity. I reserve my right to change my stance on the matter at any time. Maybe I'll change my mind in the next six hours. Maybe I'll never have sex again. I don't know. Truly, I'm not sure that I care one way or the other, so long as I'm making authentic, considered choices for myself. Honestly, though, I don't foresee such a change in the proximate future.

So, until such a time,
I remain,
celibately yours,

T.S.T.

Seven Inches of Sexual Confusion

2009-07-02T14:04:00.003-05:00

"IT'LL BLOW YOUR MIND AWAY. Fill your desire for something long, juicy and flame-grilled with the NEW BK SUPER SEVEN INCHER. Yearn for more after you taste the mind-blowing burger that comes with a single beef patty, topped with American cheese, crispy onions and the A1 Thick and Hearty Steak Sauce."

Feminists are all a-flutter. Social conservatives are all a-flutter. I'm just sort of confused.

What is Burger King's target market? Heterosexual men? But why would a heterosexual man want to eat a sandwich that supposedly resembles a large penis? Although the ad appears to try to appeal to the Maxim-magazine-reading set, it seems to suggest a curious homoeroticism. What tits-and-ass-lovin', porn-watchin' young buck yearns to put enormous phallic objects in his mouth?

Is Burger King targeting women as potential purchasers of this sandwich? That obviously doesn't seem to make much sense. The female in the ad appears to be either a blow-up doll or, at least, extremely doll-like. If BK was trying to capitalize on women's love of penises, surely it wouldn't have employed an image of a sex doll, right?

So, I'm more befuddled than offended. I feel like I can't even begin to address the cheap sensationalism or the supposed misogyny of the ad because I don't even understand it.

For the record--though I can't imagine who's keeping a record of this sort of thing--I enjoy oral sex as much as the next woman. Maybe more so. Hell, I like oral sex a whole lot more than I like Burger King sandwiches, that's for damned sure. But I can't say that this ad makes me especially more inclined to indulge in either.

Do I Add My Psychotherapist as a Friend When She Pops Up as a "Person I Might Know" on Facebook?

2009-07-01T11:56:00.002-05:00

No, thanks. That must cross some professional ethics boundary, mustn't it? I wonder if the American Psychological Association has drafted guidelines on mental health professional conduct in this area. If not, they probably should.

These Facebook suggestions provide occasional amusement, don't they? Sometimes, they are helpful. Often, they are, um, awkward.

For Many Of Us It's Food

2009-06-30T14:22:00.003-05:00

"Why We Can't Eat Just One" by Katharine Mieszkowski interviews Dr. David Kessler on the topic covered by his new book, The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite.

Here's the gist:

Dr. David Kessler, 58, says that when he looks at a huge plate of French fries, he knows that if he starts eating them, he won't stop until he's wolfed them all down. Yes, even the former head of the Food and Drug Administration, who once oversaw the nation's health, struggles to eat well like the rest of us.

In his new best-selling book, "The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite," Kessler, a San Francisco Bay Area pediatrician, explains why certain foods loaded with fat, sugar and salt exert such a pull, despite our best intentions to avoid them. As he discusses the biology that leads to scarfing down a plate of fries, he delves into such puzzles as why the French fry binger is more likely to remember the pleasant stimulation of the fries' salt, fat, texture and flavor than the stomachache and self-recrimination that follow it.

The former dean of medical schools at Yale and the University of California, San Francisco, Kessler, who is also a lawyer, contends that the American food culture, including our mores about when, where and how often we eat, plays a large role in fostering what he calls "conditioned hypereating." He argues that the government, food industry and individual diner all have parts to play in combating that plate of fries. While Kessler is not offering a weight-loss solution or proposing some chimerical healthy eating plan, his book strips away the allure of some of the most appetizing and unhealthy foods. I spoke with Dr. Kessler about why so many of us can't eat just one.

I've not read the book, so I can't comment in detail on Dr. Kessler's hypotheses. However, I am fascinated by writing on both the cultural significance of food, as well as the science behind our experience of food. So, this may offer an addition to that perpetual reading list.

Here's just a bit more:

In people who have a hard time controlling their eating, their brain circuits remain elevated and activated until all the food is gone. Then the next time you get cued, you do it again. Every time you engage in this cycle you strengthen the neural circuits. The anticipation gets strengthened. It's in part because of ambivalence. Do you ever have an internal dialogue? "Boy, that would taste great. No, I shouldn't have it. I really want that. And I shouldn't do it."

"That sort of ambivalence increases the reward value of the food. It increases the anxiety, it increases the arousal, it keeps it in working memory. We're wired to focus on the most salient stimuli in our environment. For some people it could be alcohol or illegal drugs or nicotine or sex or gambling. For many of us it's food."

It's basic learning. When you get cued, the brain gets activated. There's an arousal. There's increased dopamine. That dopamine focuses your attention. It narrows your focus. Of all the stimuli in the environment, why does that chocolate-chip cookie have such power?

We're wired to focus on the most salient stimuli. What do I mean? If a bear walked in right now, you're going to stop focusing on this interview. It's part of being human. It's what's made us successful as a species. You make food hyper-palatable with fat, sugar and salt. It's very stimulating and it becomes the most salient stimuli for many people.

If anybody's read the book, I welcome your thoughts on it.

Nutritional Progress . . . Sort Of

2009-06-27T11:00:00.006-05:00

Generally, I seem to be in one of my upswings. I hesitate to be too pleased about it, given my interminabale cycle of progress & decline. Still, my weight pleases my nutritionist compared to my stupid low 6-8 weeks ago. I've gained 1-2 pounds since that lowpoint.

She's happy about much of my behavior too. I've been cooking a lot more in the past few weeks, getting just a bit more ambitious in the kitchen, using protein shakes and Extendbars as snacks and not as my sole source of nutrition for days on end.

I'm demonstrating greater flexibility. When my mom & dad visited, I did a good job of going with the flow. My nutritionist and I decided ahead of time that I would trying "going off-plan" for the week or so that my parents were in town. The goal was to follow the lead of "normal eaters" and not get uptight about counting out servings, even if that means that I went "over" or "under" on certain days. She assured me that, if someone is nutritionally stable, she won't become unwell if she, say, gets a few too few dairy servings one day or a few too many carbohydrate servings another. If such plan deviations happen occasionally in order to preserve a little social harmony, then it's okay. The counterpart to this strategy was that, since I would be (and did) a lot of restaurant-dining, I would have to suck up the fact that popular portion sizes are usually inflated. Part of going with said flow was that I couldn't carry a measuring cup around with me, you know?

(Aside: my own "ideal" eating looks a little strange. Most adults don't seem to sit down to meals that look like mine do when I am eating in the way that my nutritionist approves. I generally eat portions that--though technically proper--look very tiny compared to what often appears on a 21st-century American adult's plate. Yet, at a given meal, I eat a wider variety of foods than would often appear on that plate. Carbs, protein, veg, fat, fruit, dairy--all portioned out in tidy little piles.)

I did rather well with that experiment, evidently. My parents are, indeed, understanding dining company; that surely helped. Again, it wasn't the aim for me to eat that loosely permanently, but rather to test my attitudes and behaviors. It was an experiment in flexibility, adaptability. You know, the sort of thing that people without eating disorders do without a second (or third or fifteenth) thought.

"How do we maintain this level of progress?" my nutritionist asked this week. Sensible enough question. Yet, I had to admit that part of my success during my parents' visit and even the weight-gain plan that preceded it after my end-of-the-school-year low had a lot to do with the feeling that I was involved in a PROJECT. It was an EXPERIMENT. An ASSIGNMENT. My mind does well with such things. I think that this might actually be a key to the meteoric-gain-dangerous-loss cycle of the past couple of years. It's not a solution, but at least it's a novel insight. As my nutritionist put it, I "gain weight like an anorectic." That is to say that I tend to approach weight gain (when I must) in much the same way that I otherwise approach weight loss, i.e. I determine a neatly defined set of goals, then I'll do anything short of the commission of a felony to meet or exceed those goals. I'll cheerfully suffer for the sake of a very specific goal. I take a certain masochistic pleasure in enduring pain in order to obtain some objective measure of delimited success. It's not tenable in the longer term, and the metrics of achievement must be tightly circumscribed. In effect, I get a quasi-anorectic fix from gaining weight when I have to.

With this insight in mind, I have to ask myself how to break out of this mode of thinking, lest I condemn myself to a lifetime of "the cycle." Granted, living with that neurosis-powered, e'er-swinging pendulum is better than dying from flat-out, balls-to-the-wall anorexia. Still, it's an unkind life sentence.

This, kids, is why I still have a nutritionist and a psychotherapist.

T.S.T. On A Hot Tin Roof

2009-06-23T21:40:00.001-05:00

It's hot.

How boring to write a post about the weather, I know. But damn. It's fucking hot.

I swear that just a few weeks ago, I actually looked forward to taking my dog out for long walks or jogs. Now, I can barely stand taking him around the block unless it's after midnight or before sunrise. Though his breed originates in the Saudi Arabian desert, I assure you that my AC-spoiled pup seems little happier after a few minutes in the noonday heat than I feel.

My new place is only about a mile from my old one, but the neighborhood is a little different. It's more residential and the homes are multi-million-dollar extravagances with hoi polloi such as myself living in the rented garage and attic apartments that accompany most of the primary dwellings. When I walk Holley, we always encounter other dogs and their walkers. Reliably, we are all panting & visibly over-heated--dogs and people alike. All the people have plastic grocery bags looped over their wrists--since this is definitely the kind of neighborhood where one must clean up after one's dog. 'Tis a unique privilege to traipse around in 100+ degrees with a warm bag of shit on your arm.

It's the sort of heat that feels downright intolerable, even for someone such as myself who is much more likely to be too cold than too hot. In this heat, I simply can't drink enough to stay hydrated, no matter how much liquid I chug. I simply can't wear little enough clothing. I can't move little enough. There's just no way to be outside of the blessed cushion of air conditioning without feeling like you are damned near close to death.

If it weren't for my dog, I might not go outside at all, save to dash from a building to my car and back, until, say, October. Texas summer heat produces in me a sort of cabin fever. It's not unlike being in the Northeast during the winter--I can look out the window and see sunshine, clear skies, and a natural world I want to venture out into. Yet, when I actually get outside, the temperature drives me back indoors.

I wish that I owned a treadmill or an elliptical machine or some other piece of exercise equipment. I miss long walks with the dog, and I miss jogging. There's not a lot of physical activity that I can engage in indoors, and I miss it. It's not just the effect that this has on my weight--hell, I might not be pleasing my nutritionist so much these days if I were running and walking more. I miss the feeling of moving around more. I miss the effect on my brain chemistry. But I feel like I'm having a heart attack when I try to jog in this heat & humidity.

I had lunch with a friend today. Because we are both intransigent cigarette-smokers, we sat on the restaurant's patio. Even with the table's umbrella for shade and a whisper of a breeze, we sweated. (And smoked. A lot of both.) Before we embraced for our parting hug, I said, "Forgive me for being so . . . well-moistened." Of course, he was just as damp with sweat as me, but it still felt almost obscene how drenched I was. It felt weird to hug someone in that condition; it felt almost too intimate somehow. (This observation is vaguely ironic in light of the fact that this friend and I, years ago, enjoyed a short-lived period of romantic intimacy. We are not intimate in that way now, though, so it was plenty enough weird at this point.)

Maybe this is why so many Tennessee Williams characters are always getting into trouble with sexual dalliances and raging violence whatnot. There's just something about inescapable heat that is very visceral, very carnal. Who knows how different Blanche DuBois or Laura might've been had they been blessed with access to air conditioning?

Parachute

2009-06-22T22:56:00.002-05:00

I need not bother confessing that it's been well over a year (I shudder to think how much longer) since I've updated the blogroll links on this site. Who knows how much longer still it will be until I do? That's exactly the sort of task that I tend to spend far more time regretting not doing than it would take me to actually do it.

However, I've become enamored with a new blog in the past few weeks, one that I suspect some readers of this blog might like quite a lot as well . . . though, I will confess that I'm never really sure why it is that most of my readers like my own blog enough to peek in from time to time. Be all that as it may, Parachute's good stuff, I think. The writer is a smart--a sharp knife, one of the sharper ones in the proverbial drawer. She's alternatingly self-deprecating and self-absorbed--which I probably only like so much because I relate to it. Perhaps most importantly, though, I like the writer's candor. Unless a blog is a niche blog--devoted exclusively, say, to political commentary or basket-weaving or whatever--I don't have much use for coyness or distance. Maintaining some anonymity is fine, of course. But a blogger can, if he or she wishes, obscure his or her identity without sacrificing intimacy. Use a pseudonym; omit identifying facts. But give me some glimpse at who you are and how you think or I'll probably lose interest rather quickly. I haven't lost interest in Parachute yet.

I know the writer "for real," but I don't know her very well. We share a good number of mutual friends and acquaintances, and I have met her. Yet, because she entered that scene in San Francisco after I had departed it, I know more of her than I know her directly. So, reading her blog has been a curious little experience. I suspect that were the writer of Parachute and I to live in the same city & run in the same circuits, we would quickly either murder one another or fall violently in love with one another. Perhaps both.

In any case, if you've got a moment to explore something new to read, I suggest you check it out.

Pissed Off: Part II aka Don't Leave the Seat Up

2009-06-21T21:15:00.003-05:00

Thank you, everyone, for your comments and concern. I think you know how dearly I love my dog. You can imagine how upset I was at the thought that something was terribly wrong with him. Awful thoughts come quickly to my anxious mind.

Holley's aberrant urinating behavior has not made a single appearance today. His general condition--as it was during the weird peeing incidents--remains normal.

Though I know that it sounds terribly odd, I think that the problem had to do with Holley's discovery of my toilet.

Background: in my old apartment, my bathroom was too tiny for Holley to fit comfortably inside. He would stand in the doorway when I was on the toilet or primping at the sink, but he couldn't easily enter all the way. (Bathtime involved contortions only complicated diagrams could convey.) In our new place, the bathroom is much larger. It's big enough that he can stretch out on the floor. And just a couple of days ago, he discovered the wonders of a flushing toilet. (Remember that this is a five year-old dog who has never really experienced toilets before. Until his retirement a few months ago, he most likely never saw a toilet. As I say, at the old apartment, he never really got the chance to "explore" this strange contraption.) He would watch the water swirl away after I flushed . . . and he learned that he could drink from the toilet bowl. Since I don't have any bleach tablets or automatic bowl cleaners in the toilet, I let him drink. (Every cat I've ever owned has freely imbibed from toilets, so I thought nothing of it.) Whether because he was fascinated by this novel source of water or because the water was especially cool or whatever, my dog would chug the toilet water with abandon. He would guzzle. I even noticed several times that I would enter the bathroom to find that the bowl was nearly empty because he had drunk so much water since the last flush. Still, I didn't imagine that it was all that strange.

The discovery of the toilet coincides roughly with the uncontrollable urination. I made the connection as I wracked my brain for any variable in the past couple of days. So, late last night, I simply closed the lid on the toilet seat. He's had his usual free access to water in his bowl today. Yet, no peeing problems. During potty breaks, he's peed, but not for the extraordinary lengths of time that typified the past two days. (Yes, Parachute, he would seriously pee for five minutes straight. It was fucking surreal!) No accidents inside.

I still don't understand why he was drinking so much damned water from the toilet. What could make that water so appealing that he would keep downing so much extra water that his poor bladder couldn't handle it? The novelty? The temperature of the water? Did it seem cool that the water was flowing, unlike the still water in his bowl? Is the plumbing in my apartment made of sausage?

I am aware that excessive thirst in and of itself can be a symptom of various problems. But I have noticed that Holley's consumption of water from his bowl has not differed from his usual routine. I spoke to someone at his usual vet clinic; she indicated that if the problems reappear I ought to bring him in for urine analysis, on the suspicion that he might have a urinary tract infection. In the absence of other symptoms like (greater than his usual) lethargy, fever, etc., and assuming that the peeing symptoms stay at bay, she said that I shouldn't consider the situation an emergency. So, I'll keep watching him closely. For now, though, I'm hoping & praying that my pup just has a weird obsession with toilets, an obsession so strong that he indulges it even to his own detriment. If so, that would not be the only neurosis that has ever appeared in our home, I assure you.

Hardwood Floors Are Small Consolation

2009-06-20T23:37:00.003-05:00

I believe my dog is ill.

The timing, along with his symptoms, seems ironic, given how much I've written about him lately.

My dog has never had a single housebreaking incident in six months. Not one. Not when I first brought him home from the adoption agency. Not when I moved him to a new apartment. Not ever. Yet, in the past 24-48 hours, he's been urinating all over the place. On the living room floor. In his crate. Everywhere. More troubling, he'll do this within a very short time of outdoor potty breaks--within an hour or so. This from the same dog who I've long remarked has a steel-girded bladder, who could easily hold his urges over night, throughout the day, etc. A little while ago, I was sitting at my desk, his head was in my lap, I was petting him . . . and he started urinating right there. To say that this sudden behavior is out of character is a massive understatement. I would be no more or less surprised if one of my human friends started pissing in his chair while we were sitting at a restaurant.

I don't even know where all the fluid is coming from. It's virtually non-stop. I've been taking him out more frequently than usual and, when I do, he pees forever. Several times, I've smoked entire cigarettes while he is peeing. I don't mean that I've smoked a cigarette during the course of a trip around the block for him to pee. I mean that I've smoked whole cigarettes in the time that he is actually standing in one place, continually urinating. Yet, within a short while, he's inexplicably taking a leak on the kitchen floor.

His mood seems fine. His appetite seems fine. His energy seems fine. But something is clearly wrong.

I don't even know where to put him or what to do. The bedding from his crate is saturated and presently airing out on my patio. So, I feel awful putting him in his crate overnight. Yet, I don't feel like I can sleep knowing that he's likely to urinate various places throughout the apartment during the night. Plus, the reason his bedding is soaked is because he peed in his crate. So, I suspect that if I put him in there overnight, he'd just end up spending the night in a puddle of his own making, which seems intolerably cruel.

Should I not sleep? Should I set my alarm for every 45 minutes or so to try taking him out? Should I restrict his access to water? Do I scold him when he has an accident?

I'm clueless. I feel helpless, useless.

Extreme Options: Ditto

2009-06-19T10:56:00.006-05:00

What about Beth Ditto?

This article springboards off a GQ UK blogger's recent excoriation of the fashion industry's recent infatuation with the obese, lesbian lead singer of the band The Gossip. The fat-pride feminist has been cavorting with mainstream fashion icons like Kate Moss and Karl Lagerfeld (aka Krazy Karl) for some time now, causing much speculation about the motivation for those unlikely combinations. The author of the article wonders whether "there is something weirdly artificial and tokenistic about the way Ditto is being cited as this season's coolest new accessory."

An excerpt:

"Well, the answer may be found at the heart of a furore that blew up on the internet this week. It started when Alex Bilmes, a journalist on GQ magazine, posted a blog arguing that Ditto is essentially a token overweight woman used by the fashion world as a decoy to distract us from its obsession with all things thin . . .

. . . Bilmes argued that the fashionistas' newfound reverence for Ditto is utterly cynical - and that they are using the lead singer of Gossip as an outsize human shield against their critics.'How can anyone say they only promote thin women when they are so enamoured of someone like her?' he mused . . .

. . . It's stinging stuff, and he makes a valid point when he adds: 'The fact that Beth Ditto is morbidly obese, and therefore arguably just as bad an example to young women as a girl ten stone lighter than her, seems to have escaped their notice."

So, what to think of Beth Ditto and, as a related but separate matter, the fashion industry's embrace of her? First, I could hardly care less about her band. I'm jaded enough about a lot of pop music, and The Gossip does nothing to redeem the genre. But that almost goes without saying: hardly anyone contends that Ditto's current fame has much to do with her musical artistry. Second, I find it a fascinating--even if frightening--conjecture that the world of fashion may soon present not one but two options to the women of the world: in order to be stamped with that world's approval, one must either be grossly underweight or grossly overweight. What a curious message: "Ladies, you can only be one of two ways, and each of those ways are extreme & unhealthy. Pick your poison."

The fashion industry has long loved hyperbole. Its product is an alternate, heightened reality, if not a surreality. Even non-eating-disordered consumers of fashion and fashion coverage (all three or four of them?)BUY images of women with bodies they themselves do not have and, sensibly, do not really want. Runway shows and haute couture photo spreads are consumed as a fantasy. True, a non-ED woman may feel crappy on some level when she eyes the visible skeletons of high-fashion models. She may wish to lose weight, but absent an eating disorder, she likely doesn't really wish that she was quite that skinny--just skinnier than she is. (Similarly, I've had many conversations with male friends who, though they may ogle over popular images of female slenderness, have insisted to me that they wouldn't really want to date a woman that thin in "real life.")

Beth Ditto's body is no more a "normal," "average" woman's body than those of cadaverous runway-strutting models. She is simply extreme in a different way. So, is it so implausible that she would be selected by the fashion establishment as a fellow icon?

Food for thought.

Image: Daily Telegraph.

More On Dogs & Women

2009-06-17T12:25:00.002-05:00

Though the greyhound adoption agency worked hard to match me to a compatible ex-racer, it could never have known how tight a fit Holley and I would be. Yet another example of stumbling into something wonderful that I could never have planned . . . and don't even deserve!

It's definitely not my style to be the stereotypical woman-with-a-tiny-dog-in-her-designer-purse, but I am often aware of the extent to which my pup serves emotional and social functions that might more traditionally be served by human beings. I acknowledge that my affections for Holley verge on modern cliches in various ways, yet, when I reflect, I'm unabashed. I like caring for another creature, yet I do not consider him "my baby." He is, after all, an adult member of his species, not my infant child. I think that reality warrants a respect that prevents me from overly infantilizing him. I like relating to him as a close companion, yet I do not consider him a stand-in for a romantic partner. He is, after all, only capable of exercising a limited intellect and range of emotions. (Not because he's not special and remarkably sensitive, but because he is, ineluctably, constrained by the anatomy and physiology of a dog, not that of a human being.) So, I'm not delusional. But I do relate to my dog differently than I have other pets I've had throughout my life, while living with family or a husband/boyfriend.

Frankly, I think my relationship with my dog is a sign of psychological progress or, at least, heightened honesty. In my infertility treatment days, I now recognize that I projected a lot onto the possibility of bearing and raising a child. Some of that emotional investment was fair and natural, but much of it was not. Similarly, I've soured past serious romantic partnerships by burdening those relationships with emotional weight that no such relationship could shoulder in a healthy way. I made those roles and relationships--actual or potential--more complicated than they ought to have been. I distorted them. With my dog, however, I have the chance to have a meaningful connection in a pared-down, clarified fashion. I know and appreciate our respective roles, and I don't make them more than they truly are or should be, all while nurturing a deep, ongoing interaction with another living being. In many ways, my experience as a devoted dog owner functions remedially for my experiences as woman in relation to the broader world.

Is it selfish or indicative of weakness of character that I presently prefer the convenient company of a sluggish, obedient greyhound to the complicated responsibilities of motherhood or romance? Could be. I would probably make an awful girlfriend/wife or mom at this point in my life. I'm so wrapped up in my work most days that I barely come up for air. When I do, I'm often not very good company. But I like the sense of purpose I have now, and I like being in charge of directing my energy towards that purpose without worrying about balancing my inclination to do so with the needs and desires of another person. In the past, I've moved hundreds of miles for relationships. I've given up academic and professional opportunities for relationships. I've sacrificed my sense of identity for relationships. I've traded my independence for relationships. I've fundamentally altered who I am and who I aim to be for relationships. If enjoying not doing so now makes me selfish or reveals my character as weak, well, so be it. If opting for the ease and simplicity of a loving & beloved dog makes me so, I'll accept that.

Does this mean that I am currently too psycho-socially retarded to form and maintain healthy traditional relationships with people? I don't know. Maybe. If so, so what? It's what I'm capable of. Better to be detained in the emotional kindergarten of doting single-woman dog ownership (if it is, indeed, that) than to draw other human beings into my addled psyche's fracas by scaring up a kid or a man despite my present inability to relate adaptively to either. At least, this way, it's clear. It's victim-less. At best, I think it's good practice for me. At worst, I'm doing the best that I can and minimizing the damage done to myself and others.

My Favorite People Finally Meet My Favorite Canine

2009-06-16T23:22:00.006-05:00

Please forgive any lack of photographic skills, as well as any deficits in the photo-worthiness of our appearances. We'd all been disassembling, moving, and reassembling a lot of furniture in the Texas heat . . . up three flights of stairs. Okay. The three humans had been doing so. The dog was fully occupied by freaking out about the fact that his tiny, insulated world was moving around him. Still, you get the picture.

I could be wrong, but I think that all parties concerned were pleased with the meeting. I've had Holley for six months, but until last week, my parents had only heard (countless, interminable) stories about him and seen a few photographs. Given what a enormous emotional space he occupies in my life (regardless of how pitiful that may seem to non-pet people, I suspect), being introduced to him in the flesh was a long time coming. My mom & dad doted on Holley. Holley, being who he is, instantly soaked in the extra affection without question. He was fighting them for bed space by the first night. As usual, he seemed to serve as a compelling ambassador for retired racing greyhounds. Unless one is cursed with a heart of granite, this dog makes one want to initiate adoption procedures. My mom's greatest regret seemed to be that, since my dog rarely speaks, she can't really get me to put him on the line when my parents and I chat over the phone . . . .

What can I say? I'm thirty years old. I'm divorced with no imminent remarriage plans. And I'm infertile. So, Holley is the closest thing to either a son-in-law or a grandchild that my folks can reasonably expect! From my perspective, though, it's a damned good deal.

The Harder Gift

2009-06-15T13:01:00.005-05:00

My parents left Houston last night after a visit that lasted most of this past week. I missed them terribly before they even departed.

For all of my adult life--about half of the years I've been alive, in fact--I've lived at least a time zone away from them. Despite regular and often lengthy phone calls and e-mails, this distance has permitted me to see them only twice or thrice a year. Without fail, every time I part ways with them, I feel a deep, acute depression. Dependably, the feeling comes, the feeling hurts, and the feeling subsides after a few days. I continue to miss them, and I continue to dream of living in the same city with them again, but I manage to reconnect with my own daily routine enough for that particular longing for their presence to recede into the background. I dread the sadness but I acknowledge the cycle.

I cannot say what these two people--my mother and father--mean to me. No words capture how deep and pure and true my love for them is. If ever there were people I could say that I would die for, without a hint of hyperbole, it would they. I would take a bullet in the skull or a knife in the gut without hesitation. Yet, because they are my parents, because I am their child, I know that the greatest thing I can do for them is not to die for them, but to live for them. I know that the gift that they want most from me--as perhaps most mothers and fathers do, insofar as they want anything from their offspring--is to live my life well. Be happy. Be healthy. Be well. Take pleasure in the joys of the world, be them tiny or grand. Work hard at what I love and feel good about it. Be kind to others and kind to myself. Brush my teeth. Wash behind my ears. Take my dog for a walk. Be stronger and more peaceful as I proceed through my days because I know that they love me and will always love me, not because of what I do or what I have but because I am their daughter.

Strangely, the fact that they wouldn't want me to die for them, but rather to live well for them, presents a greater challenge somehow. To demonstrate one's love by dying in someone's stead is relatively easy because it is so quick, by comparison. It can, necessarily, only happen once. Yet to live for someone requires a near-infinity of serial moments, an ongoing string of declarations of love. For me--perhaps because I've been near enough to my own destruction enough for it not to seem alien or entirely hypothetical--the commitment to living seems far more terrifying.

Still, I try. I will keep trying. I will try today, even as my heart aches because of their absence.

A Quote for an Urban 30 Year-Old While Moving to a New Apartment

2009-06-09T11:10:00.003-05:00

"Deliver me from Swedish furniture. Deliver me from clever art. May I never be complete. May I never be content. May I never be perfect."

Chuck Paluhniuk's Fight Club

Fixin' My Head Update

2009-06-03T15:52:00.003-05:00

--I'm not 100% pain-free today, but I can feel the penicillin doing its job. Because I'd been in agony for several days, I find myself almost euphoric about my present condition, even if some discomfort lingers.

--I just spent 90 minutes rolling around on the floor on a tennis ball, on my back. I was working out kinks in muscles I didn't know I even had.

--I have not chewed any gum today, nor did I do so yesterday. (For the record, I'm not trying to quit gum-chewing altogether. For a few minutes after meals or otherwise on occasion is fine. I would just like to see if my TMJ gets better if I'm not chewing non-stop.)

--I'm trying to re-train myself to keep my teeth apart throughout the day. I'm just checking in with my body now and again, reminding myself to keep my jaw slack.

"Now THAT Is Some Virulent Drainage!"

2009-06-02T10:48:00.007-05:00

Words uttered by an endodontist in reference to my mouth recently.

Several days ago, a tooth infection turned nasty. Then, it turned nastier and spread like, if not wildfire, well, like an infection. To my jaw, the roof of my mouth, my neck, my sinuses. For six days, I couldn't sleep for more than 60 minutes at a time. I was trying every remedy the internet could offer, but the pain ebbed and flowed between "unpleasant and distracting" to "oh-my-fucking-god-I wish-I-owned-a-shotgun."

I nearly wept for joy yesterday afternoon when the first shot of the endodontist's anesthetic kicked in.

I've got penicillin in my bloodstream, and I'm praying it does some good. Today I feel much less pain, though that's not saying much. My fever is down. I generally just feel like I've got the flu with a blazing sinus infection. Even though I slept more last night than I have in many days prior combined, I feel so tired. My mouth definitely still hurts, but it's much more tolerable, even now that that blessed local anesthetic has, of course, worn off. This all makes sense, I guess, since the endodontist said that the antibiotics would take a few days to truly effect the places outside my teeth where the infection had spread.

The first dentist I saw yesterday, who referred me to the endodontist, wants to fit me with a new mouth guard for my TMJ/bruxism. He recommends a hard acrylic type of guard, not a rubbery one like what I've tried to use the past few years. He claims that the latter tend to actually encourage chewing during sleep. This may be true. I've all but given up on the guard I acquired after my TMJ-related dental emergency in San Francisco a few years ago (fluid accumulation in one's jaw = no fun), because I always seem to spit it out during the night. He claims that the fitted acrylic versions are less likely to be spit out too. Still, he's not giving these puppies away, so I'm not sure what will happen.

It's disturbing to contemplate that my jaw-clenching and teeth-grinding could do so much damage. I have as many broken, missing, or replaced teeth as I have real, non-fractured ones. Not all of that is about the bruxism, of course. But none of it is helped and, according to the folks with the dental degrees, a hell of a lot of it is directly caused by it.

I'm trying to think of long-term, significant solutions like the new mouth guard, but I'm also trying to think about the little stuff. I know it's foolish for someone with my problem, but I chew gum all day long, everyday. I've been scolded by more than one dentist. The default position for my jaw is most certainly clenched. For no apparent reason, my teeth are crammed together all the time. If I stop and consciously relax my jaw, it feels alien. Combine these tendencies while waking with the nocturnal gnashing of teeth, and it's not a good scene.

For all my obvious self-destruction, I'm also rather keen on self-improvement. And taking even baby steps towards not hearing lines like the one contained in title of this post seems like a decent place to start.

2009-05-31T09:40:00.002-05:00

This is the meal equally set, this the meat for natural hunger,
It is for the wicked just the same as the righteous, I make
appointments with all,
I will not have a single person slighted or left away,
The kept-woman, sponger, thief, are hereby invited,
The heavy-lipp'd slave is invited, the venerealee is invited;
There shall be no difference between them and the rest.

This is the press of a bashful hand, this the float and odor of
hair,

This the touch of my lips to yours, this the murmur of yearning,
This the far-off depth and height reflecting my own face,
This the thoughtful merge of myself, and the outlet again.
Do you guess I have some intricate purpose?
Well I have, for the Fourth-month showers have, and the mica
on the side of a rock has.

Do you take it I would astonish?
Does the daylight astonish? does the early redstart twittering
through the woods?
Do I astonish more than they?

This hour I tell things in confidence,
I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.

20

Who goes there? hankering, gross, mystical, nude;
How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat?

What is a man anyhow? what am I? what are you?

All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your own,
Else it were time lost listening to me.

I do not snivel that snivel the world over,
That months are vacuums and the ground but wallow and filth.

Whimpering and truckling fold with powders for invalids,
conformity goes to the fourth-remov'd,
I wear my hat as I please indoors or out.

Why should I pray? why should I venerate and be ceremonious?

Having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair,
counsel'd with doctors and calculated close,
I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.

...

I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content.

One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is
myself,
And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or
ten million years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can
wait.

--From Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself"

Four Mostly Random Things

2009-05-27T22:51:00.004-05:00

1. I think I've finally settled on a new apartment. Ideal? No. But I'm tired of the search process . . . and I look forward to my greyhound knocking into walls and door frames (at least somewhat) less often. I hope to move in a couple of weeks.

2. Researching and writing about searches incident to arrest lately (and still) makes me eye the police officers I frequently see on my walks with Holley in a different way. Most cops are decent-enough folks, and most citizens will likely never run afoul the good graces of those cops. Yet, how well do most of us know the intricacies of our Fourth Amendment rights? How well do those officers even know them?

3. Several weeks ago, to encourage my good cheer during finals, a dear friend gave me a potted basil plant. (The week before, he gave me a bouquet of flowers, which was lovely but necessarily of limited life span. He decided to follow up with a gift with more staying power. Good thinking!) Afflicted with a notoriously brown thumb, I am pleased to report that the plant is still mostly alive. It daily supplies me with fresh basil for eatin', and I happily, dutifully tend to it each day along with the bamboo plant my mother gave me at Christmas . . . which is mostly dead.

(Aside: Ever tried fresh basil sprinkled in plain Greek yoghurt? I tried it on a whim, and I highly recommend it.)

Assuming that all pans out with my new home, I should be the beneficiary of a third-story deck soon. I look forward to channeling my present horticultural momentum--insofar as "still mostly alive" indicates momentum--towards more plants.

4. Newsflash: Gummi bears are still disgusting.

I have never been much of a particular fan of said candy, but for some reason I had a craving for them a few days ago. I'm sure I hadn't eaten gummi bears in years, even pre-Anorexia. I tried eating more fruit, hoping to dissipate the yen for something sweet. Still, thoughts of gummi bears danced in my head.

I mentioned it to my nutritionist. Her sage advice--the sort of wisdom I pay her top dollar to dispense--was along the lines of, "Well, why don't you try eating a few gummi bears." The thought had honestly not occurred to me, if you can believe it. She suggested that I find a single-serving package and, well, eat them. With some trepidation, I did. Or, at least, I started to eat them. Within a few bears, I was nearly retching. I don't mean bulimic-style retching. I mean that the candy was pretty gross. So, I stopped eating and tossed the rest of the package. Then, fretting that I had somehow copped out of some nutritional counseling challenge, I told my nutritionist. Her equally sage follow-up: "Well, maybe you don't really like gummi bears. I think they're pretty gross, personally."

Le sigh.

Strange Bedfellows

2009-05-24T22:41:00.003-05:00

My dog twitches right after he falls asleep. This may sound odd, but it reminds me of men with whom I've shared my bed.

About 30% of the time, I sleep, not in my loft bed, but "downstairs" on my futon sofa. I do it because I like cuddling with Holley, and I infer that he likes cuddling with me. Falling asleep that way is very soul-nourishing, but mid-way through the night, we are kicking and elbowing each other. The magic ends. (This too reminds me of nights spent with ex-lovers crammed into twin-sized beds, regretting the stubbornly romantic insistence on intimacy that made so much good sense a few hours earlier.) I think, on the whole, Holley and I both sleep better when we sleep apart. Yet, sometimes, even knowing that fact, it feels good to fall asleep snuggled next to a warm, furry, breathing thing.

When I put together the blankets and pillows on the sofa, Holley gets excited. When I lay down, he assumes his preferred position--his head on my pillow, his body nearly running the full length of mine. He's not a dog who thinks that his place is at the foot of the bed. Though I aver that it's not truly as creepy as it may sound, my dog essentially wants to spoon. After a bit of ear-scratching, I usually end up with my arms wrapped around the torso of this canine who out-sizes many sixth-graders. He burrows his head under my chin, and we're happy for a while.

In my married and partnered days, I always noticed that, if my bedmate and I went to bed at the same time, he (whichever "he" it was at that time, actually) would fall asleep first. It amazed me that within minutes of settling in, these guys would clearly drop off, while I, no matter how tired, could easily watch the clock tick away for an hour before truly drifting to sleep. So it is with my dog.

Because for many (most?) of my adult years my nighttime routine included observing my partner fall asleep, I noticed that within a few minutes of quieting down, these men would start twitching--jerks, tiny muscle contractions, etc. Within a few minutes, the movements would subside, I suppose as they passed into a different stage of the sleep cycle. It may sound strange, but when my spouse or partner started jerking and twitching, I would suddenly feel very alone. Not necessarily lonely, but alone. It struck me as quite curious that I could be physically so close to this person, this sentient being imbued in his waking hours with a brilliant consciousness . . . and yet, once I felt those muscle movements, I knew that he was gone in some fundamental sense. Here he was, yet here he was not. How odd to have limbs tangled together, breathing synced, but to not be present together in the most meaningful of ways. I often reflected on this oddness until it was finally my turn to fall asleep.

My dog twitches this way too. My observations when he does so are not quite the same as with the men, of course. My hound, no matter how sweet-natured and sensitive during his waking hours, is obviously limited in his cognitive and emotional capacities in ways that none of my human partners were. So, the gone-ness is not quite so stark or significant. Still, I'm left thinking, "He was here with me, and now he's not. Weird."

And I'm just a little bit jealous that I haven't fallen asleep yet.

2009-05-21T20:45:00.002-05:00

So. Yes. I swear I'm still alive.

Law review competition.

New apartment?

Parents' visit?

Generally, trying to get and/or keep my shit together.

There you go.